I was invited to share my dummy posts here on Blood Cancer Uncensored so here goes. I am happy that some folks find the dummy posts helpful.

I did not set out to write a series of informational posts. By way of background, I was about almost four years post CLL diagnosis ( a form of blood cancer) and still trying to sort through all the CLL-related acronyms thrown around. My doctors have been great and have answered all my questions, but my fundamental understanding of what CLL actually meant was lacking and no one really ever explained to me exactly what cll was.

So I sat down one rainy weekend with Dr Google and got down to basics. Everyone is different. Some want to know about their cll, others prefer not to know. Its a personal choice. I wanted to know my enemy. My research led me to cell biology and somewhere along the way a light bulb went on. I figured out what lymphocytes and what happens to them when they turn cancerous. It wasn’t all that complicated. Why had someone not explained it to me from the beginning? 

So that’s when I did a cell biology for dummies post. I had to dumb things down for me to understand and I thought I would try pass it along with the simplest explanation possible. Just having some rudimentary understanding of cll and cell biology started a process for me where the types of cll we can have and our treatment options became more understandable. Terms I have been hearing for years like 13q, 17p, CD38 and mutated IGHV all started to make some sense. That led to other dummy posts. 

I think there are some people who probably are better off not knowing the details for their disease and relying on their doctors for everything. I fall in the knowledge is power group. I have great doctors and great confidence in them. I am prone to follow their advice and well know that having a rudimentary understanding of my cll surely doesn’t put me in a position to second guess them. But I do think it has helped me ask the right questions. Its my life, I make the final decisions. One of the most important decisions I made along the way was to find doctors I trust to help me make the right decisions. 

If you are on this page, I figure there is a high probability you fall in the group of those people who think knowing more is better than knowing less. I think informed people make better decisions. I have no way of proving it, but I bet if you took a control group of 500 random people with CLL who are not members of this forum and compared it to 500 randomly picked members of this forum, the survival curve for CLL Health Unlocked members would be significantly better than the control group. 

I learned so much along the way, I think if I did a cell biology for dummies post today I could construct it better. I have a much better understanding of how important things like antibodies and cell surface molecules are. 

Well anyway, for those who want to one stop shop for dummy blood cancer articles, here they are with my standard disclaimer. I have no medical or science background. There could be inaccuracies in any dummy article either due to liberties I took in dumbing things down or due to the fact I just got it wrong. I do not give medical advice other than to suggest everyone find a blood cancer specialist they trust and who will take his or her time to answer any questions you have.

Blood Cancer for Dummies

• Introducing Blood Cancer for dummies
• Cell biology and blood cancer for dummies
• Fish testing and chromosomes for dummies
• Mutated and unmutated CLL for dummies
• Viruses for dummies – blood vancer / corona edition
• Covid for dummies – part deux
• Ibrutinib and BTK inhibitors for dummies
• Antibodies (immunoglobulins) for dummies
• Monoclonal antibodies for dummies
• Clonal evolution for dummies

The picture is of pansies and snapdragons in my sideyard bed. Notice the lone white snapdragon. We didn’t plant a rogue white snap, that’s just mother nature doing her random thing.